The New Stone Age in Northern Europe

by John M. Tyler

In southeastern Europe, around the valley of the Danube, at Cucuteni, Jablanica, and elsewhere, we find figurines, and here again the female divinity is at least the more prominent, if not decidedly dominant.[163] Déchelette tells us as to its source: “From the earliest times striking analogies have been proven between the old villages of the Danube and the Balkans and the Ægean settlements of the Troad and Phrygia. Primitive idols, painted pottery, frequent employment of the spiral in decorative art: all these occur scattered through the stations of southeastern Europe in Neolithic times and in the eastern Mediterranean basin in pre-Mycenæan and Mycenæan days. Between Butmir (near Sarajevo, Bosnia) and Hissarlik (Troy) these discoveries mark the routes which without doubt were already opening communication between the pre-Hellenic peoples and the pre-Celtic tribes.” Reinach adds: “Eastern Europe, part of Asia Minor and of Egypt, have been revealed as very intense centres of Neolithic civilization.”[164] They may be traced in rare examples still farther northward into Bohemia and even in Thuringia. But their distribution outside of southeastern Europe is very sparse. Traces of the worship of an earth mother,[165] though vague and few, can still be discovered in the superstitions of the peasant folk of northern Germany. A primitive belief in spirits of the earth, of vegetation, of fertility—of dæmons who preside over the crops, who die in the autumn or winter and reappear in the spring—is common in the folk-lore and customs of the peasants in many parts of Europe. Our Maypole has an interesting history and is probably the last survival of an ancient cult. Still other more interesting illustrations might easily be cited.[166]

The Balder-myth is familiar to us all. He is a “rare exotic,” entirely out of place in that circle of berserker gods and brutal giants who lived in or over against the Norse Valhalla, but would have found himself at home in the land and times of Dionysus. Have we possibly here an intrusion of a far more ancient religious element which even the rude dwellers in a harsh Northland could not forget, and would not allow to die?

Usually accompanying the cult of the goddess we find frequent and wide-spread traces of a related trend of thought, mother-right (Mutterrecht), maternal kinship, matriarchy: under which were generally included the reckoning of descent in the female line, rights of inheritance by the daughter, hence female rights of property and general high social and economic position of woman. These features need not be united—they may appear separately, one here and another there. We are probably not studying a system of thought or law, but a general tendency of life.[167]

Mother-right, to use the most general term, survived, partially at least, down to historic time in Egypt. It persisted in Asia Minor. Perhaps it crops out in the story of the Amazons. We find traces of it in ancient law and custom in northern Europe. Says Hoernes: “Among the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, and Slavs, remains of mother-right occur even in historic times.”[168] Wundt thinks that maternal kinship was once universal.[169] We have no time or room to discuss the origin of mother-kinship. We may yet find that it and mother-right represent distinct forms of a deep-seated universal tendency, often of independent origin, occurring usually together but sometimes separate.

Something akin to mother-right, and to a high position and dominating influence of woman in the family and in society, is only what we should expect at this time. We have seen that women were the first great discoverers and inventors; discoverers and founders of all our household arts and crafts as well as of most of our science. Women were the first spinners and weavers, the first potters. They were the first herbalists and botanists and the first household physicians. In the care of the children they were compelled to be alert, quick-minded, ready for all sorts of emergencies. Paleolithic man was a mere hunter; the rest of the time he ate and loafed. The woman provided the vegetable food, as well as much of the animal, and became the first gardener or farmer. She introduced tillage of the ground, and thus became economically by far the more important member of the partnership, and she probably had by far the more alert, quick-witted brain.

The establishment of agriculture was followed by the cult of the earth-mother, who gave birth to all the fruits of the ground and probably to all life. The goddess, with or without a male companion, was the head of the hierarchy. This again could not have been without its influence. Says Miss Harrison: “Woman to primitive man is a thing at once weak and magical, to be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-bearing denied to man, powers only half understood, sources of attraction but also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill him with dim terror. The attitude of man to woman and, though perhaps to a less degree, of woman to man is still essentially magical. Man cannot escape being born of woman: but he can, and if he is wise he will, as soon as he comes to manhood, perform ceremonies of riddance and purgation.”[170]

One other fact deserves notice. In times of dearth the savage man always eats up all the grain reserved as seed for the next year, and there is none to sow. This is the rock on which attempts to introduce agriculture among savages or nomads have usually been shipwrecked. Here the priest, or perhaps priestess, of the goddess came to her aid, armed with the weapon of taboo. Against this alliance the poor, stupid, clumsy, and slow-witted Neolithic man struggled in vain. He could vent his fury by pulling his wife about by the hair, but this availed little or naught. He had to submit and be resigned.

Female magic increases in power as we approach the frontier and frontier life. At the fall of the Roman Empire northern tribes swept away the old civilization. Grass grew in the ruined cities, only villages remained inhabited. The priests, by a liberal preaching of hell and other dire torments, attempted to subdue these barbarians to law and to introduce order. Agriculture and industry rearose or returned slowly. Finally after the “dark ages” great cathedrals sprang up, dedicated not to apostles or martyrs but to the Virgin, Queen of Heaven. Mr. Adams tells us that at this time the women of France were the real leaders. Is this apparent parallelism mere chance, or is it due to a certain amount of similarity in conditions?

Some one has said that our Neolithic ancestors, especially the megalith-builders, were priest-ridden. If he had added that they were tamed and led, and very possibly diligently hen-pecked, by a veritable matriarchate, I suspect that he would have discovered and correctly estimated the two great sources of their marvellous progress. For at this stage, as at some others, the priests and the women were the élite, and the government was, therefore, ideal for its day.

But the tendency was based upon something far broader and deeper than changing social and economic conditions and religious feeling. Even the “mere man” must admit that it was biological and natural. “Nature,” says Humboldt, “has taken woman under her special protection.” She has always been partial to the female. Throughout the long period of mammalian evolution she has showed very little regard for the males. The more they fight and kill one another off, the fewer useless individuals to feed. The same tendency reaches its logical conclusion in the parthenogenesis of insects. Havelock Ellis says of woman: “She bears the special characteristics of humanity in a higher degree than man, and represents more nearly than man the human type which man is approximating.” He boldly asserts that man seems to be the “weaker vessel,” and brings strong arguments for his assertion.[171]